In what is likely a knife through the
heart for a lot of tech enthusiasts out there, Gizmodo is
reporting that Microsoft has killed plans for its Courier tablet. We
first
caught wind of Courier back in September of 2009 and were quickly
intrigued by its innovative user interface and dual-display "book"
layout.

It should be noted that Microsoft never
officially announced that it would build Courier or said that the
tablet was anything more than a extremely
promising design concept. So it shouldn't be too surprising that
we won't see a finished product on store shelves.

At any given
time, we're looking at new ideas, investigating, testing, incubating
them. It's in our DNA to develop new form factors and natural user
interfaces to foster productivity and creativity. The Courier project
is an example of this type of effort. It will be evaluated for use in
future offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this
time.